I called the folks at Comcast and asked: "Dude, where is my frakking self-install kit?" After a lot of time on hold, the answer was: "Um, we never sent it. We can overnight it to you, no charge, but it won't go out to tomorrow."
Bzzt! No good. So the deal was that I'd pry my recumbent ass from the couch and go to the local Comcast place and get one. In return, they'd give me a
So I get the thing. It wouldn't install the software needed to unlock the modem. According to the installation software, for a Winders OS, it has to be Windows 98, ME, `00, XP, Vista or 7, and what it thinks I have is Windows NT6.1.
Which, in case you don't know, is another name for Windows 7.
So I called Comcast. I kept getting disconnected. Now, if I were truly paranoid, I'd think that what was going on was that the Verizon landline was saying "oh, you want to talk to the competition? Fuck you" and hanging up on me. But that can't be true, for I called on my cell phone.
Some nice male geek helped me out, got everything set up (though I had to politely listen to the sales pitches of All of the Great Things That Comcast Offers On the Web [and which I'll never use]). He said that Comcast's installation disk wants to put on a Comcast toolbar and Windows 7 won't let it, so I should throw the Comcast disk away (good enough).
So it works. And I have a wireless router working on it, as well.
Only wasted a good part of the day, but it's all good. Now.
I have heard horror stories about Comcast's customer service, but for the 3 years I had them they did alright by me. They were reliable and fast, and they sent someone out the next day when the wind blew the cable down. Now I live in West Oakland, and Comcast won't run their cable down to our block (bastards) so all we can get is AT&T. We hate AT&T so bad that at one point we tried Hughes' satellite dish internet, but to our amazement, it was even worse. So I'm angry at Comcast, but only because I can't get their service.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
Comcast's customer service in this area used to be nothing short of horrible. But Verizon's FIOS is being installed in this area, so now Comcast is feeling some heat. And they are cleaning up their act.
ReplyDeleteI had a few problems with Comcast when moving my cable modem from the apartment to the duplex, but to their credit they swiftly cleared it up when I called. The person I called even had the authority to reassign my modem's MAC from the old account to the new account. Astounding!
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the disk they send for the "self-install" is worthless. It wouldn't run under MacOS Snow Leopard any more than it would run under Windows 7, it appears written for circa 2006 operating systems. They had me go into a web interface on their network instead and enter some data there to make things work. No biggy, and now I know how to do it if I ever have to do it again...
BTW, we have no FIOS here. So Comcast is cleaning up their act nationwide, not just because of FIOS. A bit impressive, considering how little incentive they have to do so (they're basically a monopoly for high speed Internet here).
- Badtux the Somewhat-impressed Penguin
(Impressed only in that Comcast service now is merely tedious, not actively bad and evil like it used to be).